Til the Last Hemlock Dies: Birthday. Casita. Hemlock plague?!

Carole and I rode out to her mom's today to celebrate her birthday. Carole's actual birthday was a couple days back, but both of us were so sick with some kind of bug that we couldn't celebrate it. So, today we headed out. Her mom treated us to dinner out and then we went to the house for cake. Later, we messed about with the Casita trailer. Carole vacuumed and cleaned and restocked some of the shelves. I got out the generator to tune it up and get it running. Today, it ran great! That was a relief. It has not given us any trouble after almost ten years!

The last thing I did was go check on the backyard hemlock trees. I examine them every time I'm there and up until now they have been free of the Hemlock wooly adelgid plague that is driving the species to extinction. But today...looks like one of the trees is stricken! Just a few days ago there was no sign at all. And today several of the branches had what looks like adelgid infestation.

However, there was something about the hemlock wool that did not look right. I took some of the wool off the tree and examined it. A kind of brown residue was left on my fingers which was something I'd never witnessed when examining adelgid wool in the past. Is it something else? If it is hwa, then I will of course treat both trees against it with one of the nicotinoid insecticides that are proven to kill hwa.